


The Family Buisness

by LazyLunaticOwl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, First Time, M/M, Re-Telling, Slow Burn, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-15 23:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7242967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LazyLunaticOwl/pseuds/LazyLunaticOwl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Saving people, hunting things..."<br/>Family is at the heart of it all. Dean Winchester sold his soul for his younger brother, and for all he knew that would be the end of it. Unfortunately for him, crawling out of his grave wasn't the most shocking thing to come of this whole heaven and hell business.<br/>Family doesn't end with blood, and that's a lesson Dean is going to learn the hard way. This is how he goes from a coffin to a mattress that remembers him. Starting from the opening of Season Four, this is a re-telling of Supernatural that delves into what wasn't be captured by the camera's lens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Family Buisness

**Author's Note:**

> Consider this a test-run. I started this fic as a pipe-dream and thought I'd post what I had. Let's see if anything comes of it.  
> I highly recommend watching the corresponding episode, as the chapters are structured around them, as you can tell with the dialogue.

**Perdition (aka: Lazarus Rising) [Part 1]**

THEN:

  
_“Uncle Bobby, Dean took my book!” Sam was all puppy eyes and floppy hair, with a voice that revealed an inner strength that most six-year-olds did not, and need not, possess._  
_“You’re such a snitch!” Dean scolded, tone the epitome of ashamed older-brother. He swatted the tangled mop of the top of Sam’s head with the very item in question. He wouldn’t say it allowed, not ever, but Sammy’s reading scared him. Somehow Dean knew, in the instinctual way ten-year-olds tended to, that reading wasn’t the right thing for them to do. Especially not books about big red dogs and white picket fences and kids with bright care-free smiles._

  
_Bobby watched with a bemused expression as the two boys started to scuffle, the violence escalating until Dean had Sam in a choke hold, and Sam was gnawing at Dean’s forearm. The older boy jerked back with a yelp, and then the two were landing hard on the wood floor, grappling and rolling as they tried to pin the other. All the while the book was held in Dean’s hand, the boy making sure to keep it far out of Sam’s reach. It wasn’t until they were wrestling on the floor that Sam was finally able to pinch some of the pages between his tiny fingers. The sharp sound of ripping permeated the sounds of thumps and groans._

  
_Dean sprang up like a shot, quickly taking the torn parts of the book out of Sam’s hand, the little boy’s eyes wide with surprise, grip gone slack. Taking a protective step forward so he was now between Sam and Bobby, Dean tried to put the two halves back together. The look he gave body was one part remorseful, one part protective glower. “I ripped it. Sorry.”_

  
_Bobby eyed the boys, that “sorry” sounding more defiant than apologetic. With a stern grunt he bent down to take the torn paper. Dean’s sudden flinch had him starting up short, back leaned forward in an awkward angle, hand poised midair. With a soft exhale, Bobby kneeled before the boy, ignoring how his knees popped. He redirected his hand to place it slowly and gently on Dean’s shoulder. “There isn’t ‘nothin’ that can’t be fixed boy,” he said in his usual way of gruff assurance._

  
_Dean’s small face was lined with a weary expression, but Sam’s bloomed into heartbreaking hopefulness. “Really?” the young boy asked, sceptical but curious. Bobby smiled at the boys and went to go retrieve the scotch tape._

  
NOW:

  
(Bobby)  
“Hi this is Sam, if this is an emergency try my other number, if not, leave a message.” Bobby held the phone away from his ear and stared at it with defeated eyes. He didn’t even need to listen past the initial inhale, he had heard the recording enough. He wouldn’t bother with the other numbers. He had wandered down that road enough to know it only lead him straight to a broken heart and an empty bottle of Jack. Slamming the phone back in its cradle, he rubbed roughly at his beard and adjusted his cap.

  
“Nothing to be done about that,” he thought, bitterness and booze working though his thoughts. He slid the ancient tomb closer to him and sank back into his research. The Japanese symbols swam before him. His mind unsettled. Instead of yosie lore, all his thoughts centered on stubborn boys and the broken men they had turned into. That Dean had been. Bobby popped the cap of the nearest whiskey bottle, and poured himself a generous fifth.

  
It had been four months, but time was shit in the face of the grief that came with burring a child. Dean’s body had been ribbons of gore. His eyes, once lit with mischief, grey and placid. Sam’s face had been ashen, his eyes red from the sting of tears. Neither of them had said a word as they had gathered Dean’s cloths around his torn body, piecing it together and securing the spilled entrails with his zipped jacket. It was the type of horrifying work that one completely disconnects from as they do it. Body running without the mind’s interference.  
In that sense, digging the grave had been a crueller practice. Sam had been so quiet. Just worked like a man possessed. No matter the protests Bobby made, there was no convincing the boy to give Dean the hunter’s burial he deserved. That Dean would want. That would have been a proper burial. A proper burial implied a proper death, however, and that was just not a truth Sam was willing to accept. “He’ll need a body to come back to.” And no matter the fear and pain that statement had shot through Bobby’s heart, he daren’t argue. He just kept digging. And as he dug, he thought of the catcher’s mitt he still had in an upstairs closet. Of the day Dean had found it. The day Dean had threw the ball into the depths of the junk yard. And his regret over never buying another. Of never playing ball with his boys again. And how now he’d never get the chance.

  
When Sam called their work to a stop, the grave was barely four feet. It was just deep enough to fit the warn-wood box they had placed Dean in. It was covered with a foot of loosely packed dirt. There wouldn’t be much to protect the body from scavengers, but again Bobby’s protests fell on deaf ears. Bobby had wondered in that moment, when Sam had stuck the deadwood cross into the earth and walked away without a word, shovel in each hand, if Dean knew what he would leave behind. The idjit had sold his soul so he wouldn’t have to live without his brother. To bring his brother back. So he wouldn’t have failed him. Sam had been placed in his arms on the day of the fire, and in many ways Dean had never let go. But Dean didn’t realize Sam had held on too, clinging for a support he wouldn’t know how to stand without. Sam may have been walking, and breathing, and living right before Bobby’s eyes, but the boy was crippled.

  
Back in the present moment, Bobby pushed the tomb away and moved the bottle closer. He finished his glass and poured another. A drink for each lost boy. And then a drink for each regret. And then he wouldn’t be as bothered with the need for a reason. Only then would it be back to the yosie and how they torment their prey. Back to the life loss mandated for him.

  
(Dean)  
The first inhale was so painful, Dean thought he was still in the ashen environment of the racks. The exhale was more of a croaked groan, and the coughing fit that followed was a sweet torture to his burning throat. He was in hell. Still. And then he opened his eyes. It was pitch black, but not in the nature he expected. Not in the void expanse he was acclimated to. It was a dusty dark. It implied air and sediment and earthen stench, all of which were not present downstairs. Reaching forward blindly his fingers were abruptly jammed up against a splintered surface. The coarseness cut into his knuckles, his skin oversensitive from disuse, the sensation firing pain down his nerves. _“What the hell?”_ he internally mocked, his personal monologue compensating panic for hysterical humour. Shoving panic away in the box he kept the rest of his unconstructive emotions, re: all of them, he let his Winchester instincts take over. He punched first, he’d ask the questions later.

  
Through a rare strike of good fortune, the decrepitated wood cracked satisfyingly over the force of his fist. Dirt rained down on him, and with it, so did the crashing reality of being buried alive. Dean wasn’t completely aware-with-it-all, he just kept punching, through the earth and the debris and the crippling fear. Just kept swinging. Swinging because that’s what his body knew. That’s what his instincts knew. When finally one of his hands met open air he was startled into a hysteric momentum. He could feel sunlight. He could feel the breeze. Clawing and grasping and desperate to see this false promise of life and salvation Dean burst from his grave with a gasped sob. Filthy, dirt clinging to his sweat, salt and sediment stinging his eyes, he breathed. The air scratched along his throat, the sun stung his eyes, the wind nipped at his skin, and fear crippled this mind. He was alive, again. He was on Earth, again. Yet he still felt like he was burning.

  
(Castiel)  
On high, Castiel looked upon his charge. The body which he had stitched together so expertly was already marred with busted skin around the knuckles, and burns across the shoulders. In hindsight, perhaps the lack of exhumation along with the resurrection was ill-advised. Humans were more delicate creatures than Castiel first presumed. He’ll be sure to rectify his mistake if the occasion should ever arise again. Not that Castiel expected such a miracle. There was only one Righteous Man, and Castiel was currently watching him break a window and burglar his way in to some form of consumer establishment. He supposed the Righteous could be forgiven the ill deed as it appeared to be out of necessity. The procuring of sustenance was understandable.

  
“Dean.” Castiel sent his true voice through the ether, until it joined the Righteous Man’s plain. The disruption of the cosmos sent energy whizzing through the air, but the Righteous remained ignorant to the slight breeze as he eyed a glossed magazine with a voluptuous women of ambiguously Asian descent on the cover. It was added to the human’s make-shift cache, though what rejuvenate purpose it possessed Castiel was dubious about.  
“Dean Winchester.” His voice, clearer in its intent, stirred the cosmos, and animated the devices within the establishment. Though the man appeared startled by the static of the television, and the mumbling of the radio, he remained ignorant to Castiel’s address.

  
“Dean Winchester, heaven has need of your aid,” Castiel breeched the hemisphere, and the structure shook from the force. The man continued to look around, and his posture was alert with alarm. “I mean you no harm,” Castiel added, proud of his study of human body language, however the reassurance didn’t make the Righteous any more cooperative. The windows were vibrating at a high velocity. “I have raised you from perdition to do the work of God,” Castiel explained, losing patience with the human’s obliviousness, his true voice ringing from his form like thunder. Every glass surface in the establishment shattered, raining sharp shards down upon his charge.

  
Castiel’s form drew back, taking stock of the predicament. It was an unfortunate circumstance, the affect his true visage had on the mortal world. It would be something he would have to learn to accommodate for. In any case, the Righteous obviously was not yet in a particularly perceptive state. Castiel supposed he would have to wait until after reunions had been made to try and converse with the man again. Until then, Castiel kept his watch.

  
(Dean)  
“What the fuck?” Dean croaked hysterically, shaking his head to rid his hair of glass shards. When Dean had found the closed fill-up joint he had assumed his worst case scenario would have been the arrival of the cops, but after looking over the peeling paint and grease stained floor, the chipped counter and the dust covered products, Dean had let the anxiety release from his shoulders. Then the goddamn place imploded in a cacophony of sound and destruction. The forest he’d been buried in had looked like a post-bomb Dummy Village, and obviously whatever raised him was on his tail. With that kind of power peacocking this guy was prone to, Dean did not want to stick around to be front and center to another show.

  
Stepping back out into the harsh Illinois sun, he quickly jogged over to the payphone by the farthest pumps. The small rectangle smelt stale, and the confined space jammed his plastic bag full of water bottles and power bars uncomfortably against his hip. When the first call didn’t go through he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to sob or punch the wall. He refrained from either, swallowing down panic over Sam into something more constructive.  
Of course, Bobby’s number was reliable. Relief flooded threw him at the sound of his surrogate father’s voice, until his “It’s me, Dean” was met with the decisive sound of the dial tone. _“What the fuck?”_ Dean thought again, exhaustion and strain making frustration will up at a record pace, even for his temperament. He called back, and after his life was thoroughly threatened Dean admitted that, in the resurrection business, showing was probably more effective than telling.

  
He was right of course, even though the experience nearly put him back in his grave. Bobby’s initial attacks were warranted, Dean supposed. Even though his bicep stung from the slice.

  
Having the stuffing hugged out of him was a surreal experience. The last thing that had held him so tightly were the straps on the rack, and though the confinement made Dean’s nerves tremble, the panic was soothed away by the smell of old parchment, engine oil and gunpowder. It was the Bobby concoction that Dean had resigned himself to never experiencing again. Over the man’s shoulder his eyes scanned over the faded wallpaper, the dirty dishes by the kitchen sink, and the stacks of books on every flat surface. A knot built up in his throat and he closed his eyelids against the sting of wetness. If Bobby felt him need his fist into the warn fabric of his flannel and hold the embrace for an extra lingering moment, he trusted the man to never comment on it.

  
Then Dean had water up his nose and a new stinging in his eyes. He felt the wetness of it drip from the spikes of his hair. _“Seriously, what the fuck.”_ Dean thought bitterly, spitting water from his mouth. “I’m not a Demon either you know.”

  
Bobby shrugged, looking a little sheepish as he held the bottle up. “Sorry, Can’t be too careful,” he said, then walked over to the kitchen and handed Dean a dish towel. The younger man accepted it with a roll of his eyes.  
The following conversation about his lack of zombie flick styling made his skin crawl, but he didn’t let the discomfort show. “What do you remember?”

  
_Alistair’s face twisted into a proud smile. “That’s my brilliant protégé,” He purred, running his hands along Dean’s shoulders. Dean didn’t feel it. He didn’t let himself feel anything. The girl on his rack, South American, mid-twenties, missing the better half of her skin and her ears, was screaming. He didn’t let himself hear it anymore._

  
“Not much. I remember I was a hell hound’s chew tow. And then I woke up six feet under. That was it.” The decision to keep his memories of hell to himself wasn’t so much a choice as it was a knee-jerk reaction.  
None of that was the point anyhow, and Dean didn’t even try for a subtle Segway as he asked, “Sam’s number isn’t working. He’s not…” he didn’t even let himself think the words let alone say them.

  
“He’s fine, as far as I know.” Bobby’s confirmation of Sam being alive hit Dean like an emotional tidal wave. He felt like he could collapse in that moment. All the adrenaline that had propelled him forward from this point: out of his own grave and through miles of trekking, released, leaving him winded and so achingly tired. He pinched his nose to rid any of tells from his expression.

  
And then his mind latched onto another string of worries, and it pulled his attention taut, “Wait, what do you mean ‘as far as you know?’”

  
(Sam)  
The Impala rumbled to a halt in front of the Astoria hotel. “Ugh, thank God! I’m starving!”

  
Sam snorted and quirked an eye over at his travelling companion, “Seriously, you don’t even need to eat.”

  
Ruby rolled her eyes at him, “Doesn’t mean a girl doesn’t want to eat, Sam.” She opened the door and stepped gracefully from the car, hips swaying as she walked to the building’s door. Ruby had a way of saying his name that made him both feel like an ignorant child, but also like someone important enough to teach. He supposed it was due to Ruby’s age, a number which Sam still remained in the dark about, despite his prodding. Ruby wasn’t very forthcoming about her life, which, considering the circumstance, Sam could understand. In any case, she knew about his life, and was sympathetic towards it. That’s all Sam really needed right now anyway.

  
Sam followed Ruby into the tiny lobby and requested a queen bed. He chose to ignore the way the young pimple-faced man behind the counter eyed up the demon and gave Sam an impressed smirk. The Horney dweeb would be disappointed to know that as soon as he was behind closed doors with the woman Sam was pulling out his laptop and was soon engrossed in the articles he had on his browser. He was vaguely aware of Ruby taking off her jacket and top layers. Of her shoes being removed. And then a bra landed beside him on the bed with a soft flop. Sam stared at the pink laced garment admittedly intrigued, but not fully convinced. He quirked an eyebrow Ruby’s way, “We came here to work Ruby. We need to track down the demons.”

  
Ruby rolled her eyes and sighed in her “you’re such a stupid human” way she had. The bed dipped where her knee pressed her weight into it. Now intimate with Sam’s personal space Ruby absent-mindedly rubbed her thumb along the prominent vein in his forearm. “And what about when you find them. You need your strength Sam.”

  
Sam felt every muscle of his body go taut, like a marinate whose strings were being pulled too tight. At the same time, his mouth went dry with thirst and he felt the sick pull of desire in the pit of his stomach. Swallowing in an attempt to moisten his aching throat, Sam shook his head. His face revealed his inner conflict like a television displaying the news. The downturn of the creases around his eyes, and how his lips disappeared into a tight line were easy tells for Ruby to read. The stroking on his arm turned more deliberate, and she moved until her hip was firmly pressed to his denim covered leg.

  
“What’s the alternative Sam?” Her voice was gentle. It had a softness to it that Sam had initially been shocked and weary of, but over the months it was a tenderness he’d come to crave. “You’ve saved so many people,” Saving people, hunting things, the family business, “Dean would be pr—“

  
“Don’t talk about him,” Sam cut off, voice harshly hard in comparison to Ruby’s softness. He grabbed at her arms roughly and tossed her onto her back on the other side of the bed in one smooth, brutal movement. “This has nothing to do with him.”

  
Ruby had so much pity in her eyes Sam wanted to slap it off. “It has everything to do with him,” she whispered.  
“Shut up,” he hissed, otherwise occupying her mouth with a hard kiss. “Shut up,” barely audible as he reached for the knife in his boot. “Just, shut up,” he sobbed as he brought the metal to her flesh.


End file.
